Newly developed flexible, porous and highly sensitive nitrogen dioxide sensors that can be applied to skin and clothing have potential applications in health care, environmental health monitoring and military use, according to researchers.

Some 1.7 million Americans each year acquire hospital infections, resulting in nearly 100,000 deaths from infection-related complications. The biggest culprits: medical devices like catheters, stents and heart valves, whose surfaces often become covered with harmful bacterial films. A novel surface treatment developed by a UCLA-led team of scientists stops microbes from adhering to medical devices. The new findings are published May 19 in the journal Advanced Materials.

People with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) develop tumors on nerves throughout their bodies. Researchers have discovered that nerve cells with the mutation that causes NF1 are hyperexcitable and that suppressing this hyperactivity with the epilepsy drug lamotrigine stops tumor growth in mice.

Scientists have explored the importance of sea travel in prehistory by examining the genomes of ancient Maltese humans and comparing these with the genomes of this period from across Europe. Previous findings from the archaeological team had suggested that towards the end of the third millennium BC the use of the Maltese temples declined. Now, using genetic data from ancient Maltese individuals the current interdisciplinary research team has suggested a potential contributing cause. Researchers found that these ancient humans lacked some of the signatures of genetic changes that swept across Europe in this period, because of their island separation. Scientists concluded that physical topography, in particular seascapes played a central role as barriers to genetic exchange.

Everyone has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new study finds that some individuals weathered the stress of the pandemic better than others, in part, due to their genetics.

Repurposed drugs may have a speedier path to clinical use because they have already been shown to be safe in people. A new study suggests clofoctol may be an effective treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infections in mice.

A polygenic risk score for type 2 diabetes could be used to help predict disease risk and stratify distinct disease subtypes to better allocate healthcare resources.

Scientists identified a mutated gene common to many patients with life-threatening infections, and found that people living with 5p- syndrome may be at similar risk.

From extreme weather to another wave of COVID-19, forecasts give decision-makers valuable time to prepare. When it comes to COVID, though, long-term forecasting is a challenge, because it involves human behavior.

A new study takes a data-driven look at influenza viruses circulating among different groups of birds and characterizes which types of birds are involved in spreading the virus. This paper publishes at a time when a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza has been spreading across North America.

Researchers analyzed genomic data from global populations, including thousands of ethnically diverse Africans, to identify genetic variants that may be associated with clinical COVID-19 outcomes.

In studies with mouse and human tissue, as well as live mice, researchers report that a snag in the normal process of cleaning up broken DNA in brain cells may hasten the progression of Parkinson's disease. Specifically, the researchers found that a protein dubbed 'STING' responds to clean-up signals in brain cells damaged by Parkinson's disease by creating a cycle of inflammation that may accelerate the disease's progression.

A new examination of the way different tissues read information from genes has discovered that the brain and testes appear to be extraordinarily open to the use of rare codons to produce a given protein. Testes of both fruit flies and humans seem to be enriched in protein products of these rarely-used pieces of genetic code, suggesting another layer of control in the genome.

What are the barriers to the adoption of electric cars? Although the main financial and technological obstacles have been removed, their market share still needs to increase. In a recent study, a team investigated the cognitive factors that still dissuade many people from switching to electric cars. They found that car owners systematically underestimate the capacity of electric driving ranges to meet their daily needs.